The Danger of the Rumor Mill
1. Celebrate the progress of the gospel (17-20)
The success of the mission is deliberately attributed to God: whatever doubts might still linger in Jewish minds about the Gentile mission, it was guided and planned by God.
2. Go the extra mile for the gospel (21-26)
What exactly was James’s concern, then? First, it was not about the way of salvation (James and Paul were agreed that this was through Christ, not through the law), but about the way of discipleship. Secondly, it was not about what Paul taught Gentile converts (he did teach them that circumcision was unnecessary, and James and the Jerusalem Council had said the same thing), but about what he was teaching ‘the Jews who live among the Gentiles’ (21). Thirdly, it was not about the moral law (Paul and James were agreed that God’s people must live a holy life according to God’s commandments), but about Jewish ‘customs’ (21). In a word, should Jewish believers continue to observe Jewish cultural practices? The rumour was that Paul was teaching them not to.
These zealots for the law were ready to believe the rumours which they heard about Paul. He was accused of advising Jews who lived in Gentile communities to give up circumcision.
3. Expect to be mistreated for the gospel (27-36)
The uproar in Jerusalem is thus directly linked to Paul’s recent success in advancing the gospel in Asia. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, ‘People of Israel, help us!’ Their accusation was that Paul had been teaching ‘everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place’.
They provoked the worshipping crowd to frenzy by two accusations. The first of these was a misunderstanding, for they represented Paul as teaching everybody everywhere ‘against our people and our law and this place’ (28a). ‘It is ironical’, Howard Marshall justly comments, ‘that this should have been the charge against Paul at a time when he himself was undergoing purification so that he would not defile the temple!’
The second accusation, that Paul had brought Greeks into the temple area and so defiled it (28b), was simply untrue. It was not a deliberate lie, Luke charitably adds, but rather an assumption on their part (29).
The combination of these two accusations—the one a half-truth and the other an untruth—was enough to bring people ‘running from all directions’ (30), who proceeded to seize Paul, drag him out of the inner court, and try to kill him.
When the commander failed to discover who the prisoner was and what he had done, because of the hubbub, he had him taken, indeed (owing to the mob’s violence) carried, into the barracks. Meanwhile, the crowd was shouting, ‘Away with him’, just as nearly thirty years previously another crowd had shouted about another prisoner.
